My family just returned from a week long vacation. It was a whirlwind week full of fun and festivities at The Happiest Place on Earth. No, we didn’t go to Target. Nope, not to the liquor store, either. Even though those are my happiest places. We took a trip to the magical land of Disney World.

Our journey began at the ungodly hour of four a.m., where your intrepid heroine (that’s me), dragged her tired ass out of bed and into the shower, so as to leave her home surrounded by pitch black, in order to catch this plane:

Yes, that’s right, boys and girls . . . I had to entrust the safety of myself and my family to a plane which was coated in rival football team colors and emblem! Seriously, we almost didn’t get on. But, it was only a hop up to Philly on this abomination, so we reluctantly boarded this thing as dawn broke over the horizon.

As we were awaiting take-off, I happened to notice a very strange thing on the plane. It seems that the gentleman seated directly in front of me was prepared for both cold and warm weather. He had his sandals on . . . with socks. But the truly noteworthy thing was . . . they were the same sandals that I own and expected to wear throughout our trip. Only thing is, I would not be wearing socks with mine.

Upon arriving at our hotel, we inspected our rooms and looked outside to see a lovely view of some of the Disney parks, and also the hotel’s massive pool. Complete with mile long lazy river. The kids were stoked!!

But, there was no time for swimming at that point. We had reservations for dinner and a show at Hollywood Studios. So . . . we were off!!

The dinner was a mediocre but wildly overcharged buffet, but the show was fantastic. Actually, it was Fantasmic!

The next day we travelled over to Animal Kingdom and went on a real life animal safari, sans the actual Africa. We took a vehicle through a huge animal preserve and saw all sorts of African animals just going about their little animal businesses.

After the safari, we happened upon a live action Finding Nemo show, where the fish were these sort of big puppets being controlled by actors/singers on the stage. It was actually pretty cool. Or as one character would say . . . righteous, RIGHTEOUS!!

It was all perfectly cool, until the ginormous dancing penis came out . . . then it just got a little weird.

Later in the afternoon, we went to a “character lunch,” which is lunch at a restaurant where a bunch of characters walk around and meet everyone as they eat. I know it is a complicated concept. Try to follow along. On the way out of the restaurant, there was some sort of street performance going on, and we hung out for a few minutes to listen and watch. But then, the lead singer seemed to start leading everyone in some sort of mousekercize, so at that point, I was out.

After a long and tiring day of trekking across the African plains park, we decided to spend a little time at the pool. So, we relaxed and watched a pool-side movie under the stars. Not a bad way to end the day.

The following day found us at Epcot. Honestly, there isn’t a whole lot to do at Epcot for kids, unless you want to wait 2+ hours for the most popular ride there, which we did not, thank you very much. But we did go on a Finding Nemo ride, and afterwards, we visited something called Turtle Talk with Crush, where the turtle dude from the movie appeared on a screen and gave info to all the assembled kiddies on the floor in front of him, and even took some questions. My 2 kids were in the very front. And if you can believe it, Crush picked on 7 as his first victim subject to interrogate question.

That’s my boy in the hat with the microphone in his face.

Which was all well and good with the “what’s your name?” and “where are you from?” questions. It’s when he got to the “who are you here with?” and “parents, raise your hands . . . let’s talk to them” part where it got interesting. And by interesting, I mean getting a microphone shoved into my face and having to answer questions from an animated turtle on a big screen. Yeah, so there was that. I guess that makes me a star? Autograph lines start to the left . . .

After our brush with fame, we walked around the big lake at Epcot and visited a few of the “countries” there. We even stayed to see the fireworks show, which was nice. If you like fireworks, that is. My feelings towards them can pretty much be summed up with a resounding, “meh.”

The next day, we awoke to find a pretty cool site outside our hotel window:

Hot Air Balloons flying high over Disney. You can also see some of the main Hollywood Studios buildings there as well (the Tower of Terror to your right, the big magic Mickey hat in the middle, etc.). It was a pretty magical way to start the day.

And then we were ready to finally head over to the Magic Kingdom . . . the mecca of all things Disney.

And since I’ve probably lost most of my audience at this point, this having become a forced family vacation slide show of sorts, I will release all of you from further vacation stories . . . for now.

So glad you had a great time. At 13, Magic Kingdom was probably not the best choice for TechSupport. It was a gorgeous day though. Can’t wait to read more about your vay-cay. I’ll eventually post about ours.

Weirdly enough, and I would have never guessed it at the time, unfortunately, Tech probably would have appreciated Hollywood Studios much more than MK. And that just happened to be the park WE were at that day. Drats! It has a bunch of more “big kid” type rides and other attractions he probably would have preferred. There are a lot of kiddie things as well, though, so maybe Universal Studios is your best bet next time! I’m so sad we didn’t hook up, though. 😦

I TOTALLY realized this AFTER we left Magic Kingdom. I wish you had given me a nudge. We hadn’t been to Disney in 6 years. We picked the wrong park. Tech says the next time he’s going to Disney is when he has children of his own — or if we have guests. I am bummed we didn’t get to smooch. Mwah.

I hinted, but didn’t want to be pushy. Besides, I could totally understand wanting to go to the MAIN park if you were only there for one day. I figured he was all for the roller coasters and such, there. But yeah, looking back, I think he would have loved HS.

It has been five years since we went to Disney. I am kind of ashamed of the fact that I actually tried to make sure we (ok, I) got good night’s sleeps while we were there. Those pins were not going to swap themselves! We only stayed for one fireworks display and no parades. We weren’t there long enough for down time…4 parks/four days!

(commences biting off own arm to escape forced viewing of someone else’s vacation photos) JUST kidding! Thanks for the reminder of what a fantastic place Disney World is – I hope you had a great time, even if you were practically the twin of some geeky old tourist who wore socks with his sandals.